In the prior art, the presence of a mobile phone brought into an automobile is determined by various methods utilizing an interactive communication function. Meanwhile, the presence of a vehicle occupant can be determined by a sensor attached to a door or arranged in a vehicle interior, and arts of identifying a driver in the vehicle is also known in the art. In recent days, an art of identifying a mobile phone owned by a driver has been developed by combining those arts.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2011-148425, describes an information correlation device comprised of a driver detection sensor for detecting a driver by an image processing or a fingerprint authentication, a passenger detection sensor for detecting passengers taking seats, and a mobile phone detection sensor for detecting a radio wave transmitted from the mobile phone brought into the vehicle. The information correlation device detects a fact that the mobile phone is brought into the vehicle based on signals transmitted from the passenger detection sensor and the mobile phone detection sensor.
Specifically, the information correlation device taught by Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2011-148425 is configured to identify the driver detected by the driver detection sensor, and to identify information of the mobile phone in the history information stored in a storage that has ever been associated with the driver. Thus, the information correlation device of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2011-148425 identifies the driver's mobile phone with reference to the history information of the mobile phones brought into the vehicle that is stored in the storage. However, if the mobile phone is thus identified based only on the history information, the mobile phone of the driver may not be identified accurately.